PURPOSE: To surely discharge successively over the entire panel without intermitting the discharging by applying a constant discharging maintaining voltage to a display discharge cell continuously.

CONSTITUTION: Display discharging cells DC11 - DC54 are provided at the intersections of anodes DA1 - DA4 and cathodes K1 - K5. Auxiliary discharge cells SA1 and SA2 are provided between odd-numbered and even-numbered anodes and auxiliary discharge cells DS11 - DS52 are arranged at the intersections of the auxiliary electrodes and cathodes. Then a cathode driving circuit 2 applies sequential scanning pulses K to the cathodes K1 - K5. An anode driving circuit 1 applies a specific constant voltage between the auxiliary electrodes SA1 and SA2 at all times. Then the circuit 1 applies write pulses W, generated by superposing a specific voltage Vw upon a constant voltage Vss, to anodes that a display discharge cell to be driven corresponds to at the timing of scanning pulses to the cathodes that the display discharge cell corresponds to, thereby starting the discharge of the display discharge cell.